There have been deep changes in societies during the last decade. As a result, schools face new challenges, such as avoiding exclusion by promoting inclusion. In this paper we present the findings of our efforts to use collaborative work as a mediation tool in order to achieve more inclusive learning settings. This work starts from the assumption…

This article explores how sequestered novices within a community of practice struggled with their reliance on individual learning resources and identity development. In a year-long study at a child-care center that included methods of participant-observation, interviewing, videotaping, and apprenticeship, five inexperienced child-care teachers,…

Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an…

More than ever before, educational institutions are called upon to prepare young children for the demands of an increasingly globalised world and the challenges of preserving our biosphere upon which all human life depends. In order to provide them with the personal and professional foundations they need to participate in a multilingual and…

As a participant-observer, the author relates observations, interviews, and surveys from her experience in a Cuban Escuela al Campo ("School to the Countryside," or EAC) camp located on a collective farm outside of the city of Havana. The Pioneers, the youth section of the official Cuban Communist Party, organize the EAC program…

The purpose of this study was to investigate a multi-faceted women's calculus course designed to retain women in advanced mathematics courses. With this research, we wanted to find out, first, in what ways students were influenced by participation in the course and, second, in what ways these influences affected their mathematics learning or…

Purpose: Trade unions, like many other membership-based social movement organisations, are confronted by the challenge of growth and revitalisation. Declining membership numbers, an increasingly restrictive legislative framework, and dramatic changes in modes of employment have combined to challenge many unions to rethink the way they work. In…

This article examines the role of intergenerational relationships in the lives of experienced poets and writers ("soldiers") and emerging poets and writers in what the author terms Participatory Literacy Communities (PLCs). Drawing from Wenger's (1998) concept of communities of practice, the author uses data from two examples of PLCs--Black…

Peer tutoring in Higher Education is being used with increasing frequency to aid in student learning, motivation, and empowerment. Although an extensive body of research documents the efficacy of such programs, it exhibits a surprising lack of awareness of the social dynamics involved. This study focuses on peer tutors and students as they…

Background/Context: This article returns to and expands upon Cremin's and Garfinkel's ideas about education as work--deliberate, systematic, and sustained work--that changes one's consociates, whether planned or not. That is, education must be seen as occurring everywhere, to and by everyone, in many contexts other than in classrooms or schools.…

This action research study addresses the link between building evaluation capacity and enhancing evaluation use for learning. The author shares her experiences and reports on the evidence collected from a set of self-evaluation capacity-building interventions that she implemented. Using a mixed-method approach, the author first determined that the…

This study explored how Thai learners of English as a foreign language, engaged in English activities outside of classrooms to learn and practice the English language. Three research questions of this study include: (a) How do the participants perceive access and availability of out of class English activities in local environments?, (b) How do…

This article reports on aspects of a recent research and development project in doctoral education. It focuses on the use of email for tutor's formative assessment within the early stages of a Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) in an English university. Its case study methodology included participant observation of the programme workshops,…

This report describes participant evaluation as a method of studying social phenomena. A review of literature presents participant observation in relation to some of the other techniques of research, e.g., experimentation and statistical surveys using pre-tested questionnaires. Lengthy discussion of seven problem areas of participant observation…

Participant observation of 32 mildly learning handicapped and 32 nonhandicapped adolescents in a high school setting found that handicapped adolescents had fewer friendships than did their nonhandicapped counterparts, less stable friendships, and less evidence of intimacy and empathy between pairs of handicapped peers. (Author/DB)